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Mock Duck

A steak rolled with bread, onion, salt pork, sage, and egg, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mock Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Soak the bread until soft.

  2. Add the chopped onion, salt pork, sage, and the beaten egg to the bread.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the mixture on the steak.

  2. Roll the steak, tie it securely, and bake for one hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sirloin steak
Forms the outer meat wrapper that holds the stuffing while it cooks.
Stale bread
Soaks up moisture and binds the stuffing so it stays soft rather than dense.
Onions
Add moisture and savory sweetness as they soften into the stuffing.
Egg
Binds the bread and onion mixture together so it holds its shape when rolled.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the stuffing moist during baking.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the steak. If the roll is loose or unevenly tied, the stuffing can leak or shift during baking, leaving parts of the steak dry and the filling unevenly cooked.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, egg, pork):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, egg, pork. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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